The present invention relates to a capsule preparation system, and in particular, an automated system to fill capsules with radiopharmaceuticals.
Radiopharmaceuticals are often delivered to a patient in capsule form. To prepare the delivery capsule, a small quantity of radiopharmaceutical is manually drawn from a vial and injected into a powder pill capsule. The manual process uses small syringes and small quantities of liquid, which must be precisely measured and injected into the capsule. The manual process results in inefficient, expensive and time-consuming preparation of the capsules.
Radiation exposure to personnel preparing capsules from a bulk packaged radiopharmaceutical is high, especially to the hands, when currently available methods and equipment are used. This problem is especially critical with use of high energy radiopharmaceuticals, such as iodine, because of the high energy photons associated with the radionuclides and its extremely short life. With currently available equipment, an operator must draw the dose, remove the syringe from the drawing shield, move the syringe to a dose calibrator, measure the dose in a dose calibrator, replace the syringe in the drawing shield, and then inject the dose into the capsule. Oftentimes, the capsule is injected several times to attain the correct dosage. Repeating this process multiple times using current methods and equipment causes additional radiation exposure to an operator. Adding radiation exposure from these drawing operations to the already high dose received by the operator is dangerous and considered unacceptable. Commercially available equipment for safely preparing radiopharmaceuticals is not available or prohibitively expensive.